The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  Before Ada began her training, she took a day off and went to visit Eliza once again. She was still worried about Eliza, remembering what the smallholding had been like and the instant dislike she had felt for Ralph Maxwell. When she got to Hummerbeck she realised that she had underestimated Eliza’s willpower and her ability to make a home of wherever she was. That was Eliza’s great strength, Ada mused, she would always do her best with what she had. Ralph was at the pit, she was thankful to learn, she didn’t have to meet him this time.

  ‘But he’s not so bad, Ada,’ Eliza reassured her. ‘He’s good with the bairns, Bertie’s quite fond of him. He likes to help him see to the pigs and things.’ Eliza paused thoughtfully. ‘I suppose the bairn likes having a man about the place; he follows Ralph around all the time.’

  Ada fervently hoped Bertie was not modelling himself on his uncle. She shuddered to think it but tactfully didn’t let Eliza see that.

  ‘And they are both blooming with health. They’re grand, Ada, not a cold so far this winter.’

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ Ada said warmly. She watched Miles as he played with an enormous tom cat – a very patient tom cat, she thought, as Miles pulled himself up by the poor animal’s fur, then tugged and strained to pick up the animal, which was almost as big as he was. She thought the cat might scratch, but instead it simply moved away to the other end of the room and stared at Miles with unblinking eyes as the child tottered uncertainly after it, his fat little legs, with the feet encased in tall boots to strengthen his ankles, plodding across the flagstones until with a grunt of satisfaction he reached the cat. Whereupon the animal rose and stalked regally back to the other side.

  ‘Leave Timmy alone, Miles,’ Eliza said gently, picking her son up and hugging him. Miles struggled to get down again but Eliza held him firmly. ‘He doesn’t like having his fur pulled, pet.’

  Ada looked round the kitchen, which had changed a great deal since the last time she was there a year ago. There were cheap but pretty curtains at the sparkling window and cushions on the chairs. Eliza had been busy.

  ‘You’ve made it nice, Eliza,’ she said.

  Eliza glanced round herself. ‘It is nice, isn’t it? Well, you need a bit of comfort, don’t you?’ Her tone turned pensive as she went on. ‘It’s not going to last, though, I don’t think so, any road. Ralph’s courting, and if he gets married, well, they won’t want me and the bairns, will they?’

  ‘Getting married?’ Ada was astounded that anyone would marry Ralph. She thought about his appearance that day the year before – how could someone want to marry him?

  ‘Aye.’ Eliza wrinkled her brow, thoughtfully. ‘Still, come September, Bertie will be at school and I’ll only have the babby during the day. Why, man, something will turn up. We’ve not starved yet.’

  Ada didn’t know what to say. It seemed to her that every time Eliza seemed to be getting somewhere, something happened. Eliza saw her concern.

  ‘Never mind now, I’ll make out. Let’s have a walk out and find Bertie, he’s playing somewhere down the field. The fresh air will give us an appetite for our teas.’

  Bertie was soon found. He was busy turning over the muck heap and he stank to high heaven. His uncle had put him a small handle into a blunt pitchfork but he wasn’t supposed to be using it without his uncle there.

  ‘Bertie!’ Eliza said sharply. ‘Put that down, you’ll stick yourself with it.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Bertie said stoutly. Nevertheless he pushed the fork into the pile and turned to Ada. ‘Hello, Auntie Ada.’ He smiled his slow smile and went to kiss her.

  ‘You’ll have to have a wash first, Bertie. Auntie Ada doesn’t want you touching her like that, you’ll make her smell of muck. Go on, do as I say.’

  ‘Never mind, pet.’ Ada saw his crestfallen face. ‘I can kiss you without touching you, can’t I?’ She bent down and pecked his cheek. ‘Bye, Bertie, what a big lad you’re going to be!’

  ‘I’m big now, Auntie Ada,’ Bertie said proudly. ‘Uncle Ralph says I’m a big lad.’

  Ada smiled at the boy. He certainly looked much healthier than he had been before they came to live on the farm, she thought. It would be a pity if Eliza had to leave it. And then where would she go? Ada, in spite of her dislike of Ralph Maxwell, fervently hoped the little family would be allowed to stay on the farm for a year or two, perhaps, until the boys were older.

  ‘Come back as soon as you can,’ Eliza said as Ada took her leave. ‘You know how we love to see you.’

  Ada went down the road, turning at the bend where a new sign had been erected, warning of ‘Land subsidence due to pitfalls’, to wave before she went out of view. Pitfalls, she thought ironically – there was more than one kind of pitfall and Eliza’s life seemed strewn with them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The County was not far away from St Margaret’s on the outskirts of the city. Ada knew it was funded by voluntary subscription and took patients from the whole of the county apart from the large conurbations on the coast, and it pleased her sense of justice that this was somewhere ordinary people were treated without the stigma of the workhouse hospitals.

  She found the actual work of a junior probationer was not so different from that which she had been used to as an undernurse. All the same, it was another step up for her; she was on her way. Everything was a challenge to her, and she enjoyed it all despite the hard work.

  By the time Ada had been at the hospital for a couple of months, it was fast becoming her whole world. There was so much to do and so much to learn that everything else in her life was fading into the background, even her future husband.

  Tom wrote to her with unfailing regularity, his letters loving and full of their plans for the future, but Ada had to admit to herself that she forgot all about him until his letters arrived. Her world was work, study, the writing-up of her ward book and sleep. Every night she went to bed as soon as she could and slept soundly until Night Sister’s call woke her at half past five next morning.

  Walking to the wards after breakfast one morning, Ada was accompanied by a fellow probationer who was on the same ward. Meg Morton came from Bishop Auckland, her father was a master at the grammar school there. She was homesick and when she found out one day as they talked casually over tea that Ada had lived there, she liked to talk to her about the town. This morning as they passed the office they saw by the small group of nurses around it that the post was in. Meg, ever eager for news from home, paused.

  ‘Let’s see if there are any letters for us, Ada. We have the time,’ she said, joining the queue without waiting for a reply.

  Ada consulted the watch pinned to her apron, a present from Tom for her eighteenth birthday, which had been the week before. The watch was not an expensive one but it had a second hand so it was easy to time pulse rates and it was the envy of her fellow probationers. She saw it was true, they had a few minutes before they were due on the wards. She wasn’t expecting a letter herself, Tom’s had arrived the day before but she waited patiently with the other girl.

  In fact there was a letter for her: it was from Eliza. That was nice, she thought, with a little thrill of pleasure; tucking it under her apron bib she decided she would read it at lunchtime. It was something pleasant to look forward to besides the fish pie and cabbage which she knew would be the fare that day, for the menus varied not at all week by week. As the two undernurses reached the ward and were plunged into the usual hectic round of cleaning and bedmaking in preparation for the rounds of the ‘Great One’, the head physician, she forgot about the letter and everything else not to do with her work.

  It was not until Ada was back in her tiny room that night, preparing for bed, that she took off her apron and the letter fell to the floor. Lovely, she thought, her tiredness lifting a little, now she could read it in bed in comfort. Quickly she finished getting ready and slipped between the sheets.

  She lay against her pillow to read but within seconds she was sitting bolt upright, her pulse quick
ening with a turmoil of emotion. A cutting from the Auckland Chronicle had fallen from the envelope when she opened it and idly, she picked it up and read it. Eliza sometimes sent her little items of news about people they knew in the district, but this particular cutting was not just about an acquaintance or a town notable.

  It was headed, ‘Bishop Auckland man sent for trial at the next Quarter Sessions’, and what followed was like a door opening on Ada’s past.

  ‘Appearing before Bishop Auckland magistrates this Thursday last, Harold Parker of Tenters Street, charged with gross indecency towards two small girls in the Bishop’s Park on Sunday last. Police Constable Albert Smith happened to be walking with his family by the deer house in the park when he heard the children crying. Deciding to investigate, he found the said Harold Parker with the girls. A further serious charge of a sexual nature is being considered. Parker is remanded to Durham Gaol until the next Quarter Sessions.’

  Ada’s first feeling was one of relief. She dropped the cutting and stared unseeingly at it. Harry Parker was locked away, he would not be molesting little girls again. No other child would ever have to suffer what she had suffered at the hands of her uncle. Her stomach churned at the thought of those times when he caught her in the kitchen or on the upstairs landing – the feel of his hands and worse. He had hurt her, oh aye, how he had hurt her. Sighing, she lay down and picked up Eliza’s letter.

  ‘So you see, he got caught at last,’ Eliza had written and Ada could almost hear the satisfaction in her friend’s words. ‘I feel a bit guilty that we didn’t tell the bobbies before, Ada. Those poor little lasses, you feel for them don’t you, though why they were there by themselves I don’t know. I bet their mams look after them better now. But who would think anything could happen in the Bishop’s Park? On a Sunday like when there are a lot of people about, too. There was even a rally there further along, the Primitives I think. Mind, I don’t know what your auntie will do now, she won’t be able to hold her head up in the town. The bairns’ fathers were pitmen, they work at Newton Cap Colliery, they look after their own, the colliers, don’t they? Doris Parker had her windows broken last night and now she’s trying to sell up. Bye, if they got a hold of her man they’d lynch him.’

  Ada put the letter down with a sigh. How would Auntie Doris earn her living now? Nothing was ever straightforward, there were always more things than one to think about. Looking back on it now, Ada realised this was what her aunt had feared for years. The bitter thought that Doris Parker could have shielded her own niece from her husband occurred to her: oh aye, she could. Why did some women let it happen to bairns? The question was unanswerable. She turned over on her side, restlessly. Well, she mused, both her own mother and her mother’s sister had been unlucky with men.

  She began to think about her own mother. Nothing had come of the letter to the Salvation Army, there had been no response at all. Perhaps she would try again; maybe if she put an advertisement in the London papers her mother would see it.

  Ada turned out her light and settled down in the bed. She would try again, she thought. Maybe her mother hadn’t come back in the beginning through no fault of her own and now thought it was too late.

  As usually happened when Ada was reminded of her time in Auckland, her thoughts turned to Johnny and the familiar sadness flooded through her. Why could she not forget him? Despite all her efforts to focus her mind on Tom and their bright future together, the future they were both striving for, the image of Johnny remained, stubbornly there in the recesses of her mind, waiting to pop out again to torture her with memories of her lost dreams. Ah, Johnny! she cried deep down inside. Johnny, I loved you, Johnny.

  John Fenwick, head of the Fenwick Steelworking Company of Toronto, was sitting at his desk, feeling very pleased with himself. He had been in Canada for a little over a year and already the small firm he had founded with the money left to him by his brother Fred was burgeoning and he was contemplating taking on extra workers. Fortunately there was a large pool of men who had emigrated to Canada in the last year or two and a lot of them had experience of the industry.

  Johnny had just landed a fat contract with a company in Ontario. His designs had reached a lot of the right men in this country and caught hold of their imaginations. Chary though they could be of innovations, some of them were beginning to appreciate Johnny’s work. The prospects for the small company were very good indeed and getting brighter by the day. A discreet knock at the door of his office caught his attention.

  ‘Come in, Frances,’ he called and the door opened on the girl who had been with him from the inception of the business, Frances Holden.

  She was a pretty girl, with dark hair swept up severely in a knot on top of her head in the way commended at the business school where she had trained as a stenographer. She was dressed in a severe white shirtwaister and black skirt with a black bow tied under her collar. Holding her notebook and pencil and with a spare pencil stuck in her hair, she was the epitome of the New Woman, the efficient secretary.

  ‘Sit down, Frances.’ He smiled at her triumphantly, wanting to share this new success with her. ‘I want you to take a letter.’

  As he dictated his acceptance of the contract on his desk, Frances grinned in delight. He had worked long and hard at this one, and she had been behind him throughout. Dropping her notebook on the desk, she ran round to him and flung herself in his arms, the New Woman forgotten.

  ‘Johnny! Isn’t it great? Oh, let’s go out and celebrate! Forget work for the day, this calls for champagne and caviar.’

  ‘Miss Holden, please, remember where you are,’ Johnny said primly, but he couldn’t keep it up and, laughing uproariously, he kissed her soundly. Her breath tasted of peppermint, another of the maxims of her business college, ‘Always make sure you do not annoy your employer with the smell of stale breath.’ Her lips were soft and inviting; Johnny kissed her again, lingeringly this time. Then reluctantly he put her firmly away from him.

  ‘Time to celebrate later, Frances. First of all we have this letter to send, I want it off today. Also I want you to place an advertisement in the paper for workers.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Frances picked up her notebook and returned to her seat, but as her pencil squiggled over the paper the dimples in her cheeks kept deepening. Johnny was a lovely man, she thought. She couldn’t help it, she was quite besotted with him.

  They ate in an intimate French restaurant conveniently close to the office. In the rosy glow from small lamps above each table, Frances’s hair gleamed darker, almost black, and she had loosed the severe topknot so that it hung down on her shoulders, secured only by a loose red ribbon. Johnny ordered a bottle of champagne to celebrate his success of the afternoon. His mind was full of hope and determination; he was on his way now, he thought jubilantly.

  ‘Here’s to you, Johnny,’ Frances said softly, holding her glass out to him, and he clinked his own against hers.

  ‘No, no, Frances, here’s to us. Where would I be without your help? You organise the office for me, you know every customer and handle them perfectly. Here’s to us, I say.’

  They sipped the champagne, savouring the delicate taste and the feel of tiny bubbles bursting against the roof of the mouth. Johnny smiled across the table at Frances – dear Frances, where would he be without her?

  Frances, seeing the affection in his expression, dropped her eyes in momentary confusion. When she looked up again her cheeks were rosy and she was gazing at him mistily, the very picture of a girl in love. For a split second Johnny had misgivings he didn’t mean – No, he thought, he had been reading more into her gaze than was actually there. Frances was simply pleased about his willingness to share the credit for his success. He picked up his soup spoon and began eating his bouillabaisse enthusiastically.

  ‘Tuck in,’ he advised Frances, ‘it’s delicious.’

  After a moment Frances picked up her spoon and followed his example.

  They talked companionably over the meal, discussing t
he extra problems which would come with enlarging the business. Johnny ordered another bottle of champagne over the noisettes de boeuf aux champignons, and afterwards they finished off with a Napoleon brandy to drink with their coffee. So it was already after eleven when they left the restaurant.

  Laughing together over something that had been terribly funny though they couldn’t remember what it was, they went out into the cold, frosty air of a Canadian spring. Johnny grabbed hold of Frances as she swayed suddenly, almost falling.

  ‘Whoa, there, Miss Holden,’ he joked, drawing her to him, and his arms slid round her waist. ‘Anyone would think you had had too much to drink. Shame on you, how will you get up for work in the morning? I warn you, as your employer I cannot countenance such goings-on.’

  The mock severity in his tone gave way to chuckles as he tightened his hold: she was looking up at him, her great dark eyes gleaming in the light from the streetlamp outside the restaurant, her lips parted and inviting. Johnny bent his head and kissed her. The kiss was gentle at first but as her lips opened to him and her arms stole round his neck it became hard and demanding.

  At last, shaking a little at his own feelings, Johnny gently disengaged himself. ‘I’ll get you a cab,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Her whisper was barely audible. She still clung to his arm and he could feel the trembling heat of her body close to his despite the cold night.

  The street was deserted, not a cab in sight. Frances lived about two miles away from the restaurant, in a hostel for women run very strictly by an immigrant Presbyterian family from Scotland; the guests were expected to be safely tucked up in bed by midnight. Even in her slightly dazed state of euphoria, she began to worry about getting home on time.

  ‘Let’s walk to the corner of the block,’ Johnny suggested, ‘maybe there’ll be a taxi there.’ Holding her firmly to his side, for she needed his support, he walked her to the end of the street, but it was to no avail. The whole town appeared to have closed down for the night, the streets were deserted.